indeed want to know that Guy had returned, but he was also glad of an excuse to end this uncomfortable lecture. “No, we are done here, Warin. How many ships are with him?”
“Only the one galley, my liege.”
“What? You mean he failed to bring any of those laggards back with him?” Richard was incredulous; how could Guy fail at such a simple task? He was halfway across the tent before he remembered the other men. “This cannot wait,” he explained. “I have to find out what happened.”
They agreed politely that this took precedence, and as soon as Richard had gone, they, too, began to disperse, relieved that at least they’d gotten him to listen. Only Henri and André lingered, helping themselves to some of Richard’s wine, for they thought they’d earned it.
“That comment about a pitchfork . . .” André paused to take a deep swallow. “Does it mean what I think it does?”
Henri’s mother had made sure he’d received an excellent education, no less thorough than Richard’s, and he’d recognized the quote. “It was from Horace,” he said, adding when he saw André’s blank look, “a Roman poet. Yes, it does mean what you think—that a leopard cannot change his spots, and God help us all, but neither can a lion.”
JOANNA AND BERENGARIA had spent the afternoon with Prior William, an English cleric who’d come to Outremer to establish a church and hospital in honor of the martyr St Thomas of Canterbury. He’d arrived during the siege and set up his chapel outside the walls, but now that Acre was in Christian hands again, he hoped to move into the city. Since Richard had promised to endow the hospital, he’d taken the women to see a suitable property near the gate of St Nicholas. Their lives were so different from what they’d experienced back in Sicily and Navarre, when royal duties had kept them busy from dawn to dusk, that they were pleased to be able to function again as queens and they gave the prior permission to purchase the building. They then visited the covered market street, where they bought perfumed soap to assuage Anna and Alicia’s disappointment; the girls had wanted to accompany them, for an excursion into the city was much more appealing than their daily lessons. So it was dusk before Joanna and Berengaria returned to the palace, their household knights good-naturedly complaining about being loaded down with their purchases like pack mules.
As soon as they entered the courtyard, Anna and Alicia flew out the door to meet them. “Where have you been?” Anna scolded. “We did not think you were ever coming home!”
“We told you we’d not be back until Vespers,” Berengaria said, puzzled, while Joanna studied the girls with sudden suspicion. They were flushed with excitement, had clearly been up to something, and she hoped they hadn’t been playing pranks again. The timid Alicia had blossomed under the bolder Anna’s tutelage and they’d been chastised in the past week alone for smuggling a mouse into the bed of the Lady Uracca, giggling uncontrollably during the morning Mass, and sneaking a roast from the kitchen to feed to Joanna’s dogs.
“We have a gift for you. But it is a surprise, so you must first cover your eyes,” Anna insisted, producing two silk scarves for that purpose. Joanna was game, but Berengaria balked.
“I am not going to put on a blindfold,” she protested, and was holding firm despite the girls’ entreaties when she glanced across the courtyard and saw the man watching in amusement from the door of the great hall. “Richard!” Her dignity forgotten, at least for the moment, she gathered up her skirts and ran into his arms, followed by a delighted Joanna and the disappointed Anna and Alicia.
“You were supposed to wait, Malik Ric,” Anna pouted, but Richard was too occupied with kissing his wife and then hugging his sister to pay her much mind.
DINNER WAS THE MAIN MEAL of the day and so supper was usually a more modest affair. But Richard, Baldwin, Morgan, and the other knights he’d brought with him proclaimed the lamb stew to be utterly delicious, regaling the women with stories of the dubious victuals cooked over their campfires. Richard did not find the conversation as appealing as the food, though. Guy de Lusignan had often boasted that he’d kept no secrets from his queen, and Richard discovered now that Guy had been as forthright with Berengaria and Joanna as he’d been with Sybilla. He’d told them